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4 tips for organizing your folders and music library

7 Aug 2017

producer/techniques

Creating and working with audio can be a stressful process, you can get lost in all the different folders, possibilities, sample packs and thousand versions of your projects. We can strongly recommend structuring your process and make a personalised workflow with various rules for yourself. In the beginning, this may take some time, but in the long run, you will save a massive amount of time. If you keep your desk and studio clean, youalso should keep your Digital Audio Workstation clean.

Also, check our video on how to organize your sample packs!

1. Own workflow and plan

Start off with a quick brainstorm by yourself, write everything down that you want to clear-out. Relate this back to your workflow and the way you work, didn’t forget anything? Plugins? Clients? New Downloads? Project storage? Back-ups? Good. For every main subject like plug-ins and samples you can make some folder structure as an example, we attached a picture from Splice below. Do this also for your project folders; you can make folders like idea’s, final mix, EDM, Hip-hop, etc.… So you don’t have one big folder where everything is just messing with each other.

Picture by: Splice.com

2. Saving under the correct names and back-ups

Almost every creative person knows how fast you can save projects under a weird name. With saving quick and like the picture below you can work quickly, but at the end, you will lose a lot of time by finding the project you are looking for. We recommend saving with a certain structure like Roses_idea_v1 then Roses_idea_v2 then in the mix stage Roses_mix_v1 etc.… Make sure if you render a project it’s the same name as your project name, this will clarify which render relates to which project!

This is even more important when your backup projects on multiple external hard drives, which is very important! Don’t be the guy whose laptop crash and lose all his projects, a 1TB hard disk cost around 80$, one of the best investments as a music producer!

3. Cleaning

Clean out the things you don’t use anymore on your main computer, move them to another hard drive. Plan some time every week to do this. This will make sure you have enough space on your computer and less stress!

4. Keep it going

Keep this structure going and move from an amateur to a semi-professional. Know what you are doing and keep it going. These small things will separate you from a beginner to a pro. If you ever lost track on working with structure, plan some time to re-organize it.

Keep in mind that the explained workflow here is just an example, important is that you find the way that works for you!